Thursday, 7 August 2014

Travelling
with a toddler on a long car trip or a flight is most parent’s worst nightmare.
And if you’re a parent like me, you don’t want your child to play an i-device
the entire trip. I came across the idea of ‘Busy Bags’ on Pinterest, and after
a little more searching I found “Little Nest Busy Bags”. Sarah has created a range
of fantastic activities that are not only great for engaging your children at
home or whilst travelling, but are fantastic classroom resources!

The
Little Nest Busy Bags are ideal for pre-school and infants (K-2) aged children,
and are fantastic for children with special needs. My first purchase was the
Mega Busy Box (now discontinued but similar products are available), which
contained activities including lacing, shape and colour sorting, alphabet and
number identification, and I have since gone on to purchase many other bags
including the Spin & Spell, Pizza Factory, Australian Animals, Pom-Pom Pick
Up, Clothes Line, Colour and Pattern Matching Pegs and Fruit Patterns. As well
as using these with both my boys, I have taken many of the activities bags to
school (most are packed in a sturdy plastic A4 zipped case) and used them with
my little treasures.

And
the kids LOVED them! Kids always love something new, and they just saw them as
new toys to play with. They were ordering numbers and the alphabet, sorting
shapes, using tweezers to sort the pom-poms and create fruit salads and having
fun whilst learning!!!! That’s the beauty of these bags – the bright colours
and different textures of the materials engages children’s senses and
imagination.

So
jump on over to Little Nest Busy Bags and check out the fantastic
variety of activities Sarah has created, and use this code TEACH2014 for a 10%
discount on all purchases.

Why is the development of
Fine Motor Skills so important?

Fine
motor skills are the collective skills and activities that involve the use of
fingers and hands, and along with gross motor skill development are a vital
foundation for other important future skills such as drawing, writing and
self-help. Adopting an individualised approach based upon your child’s interest
(or an individual child in your class) while ensure that learning is enjoyable
and meaningful and are great for those children who have difficulty with fine
motor skills and are not intrinsically motivated in fine motor skill building
activities.